Decarboxylation of amino acids is an important synthetic route to biologically active amines and other useful byproducts. Current procedures for synthesis of biologically relevant amines suffer from extremely long reaction times and difficulty with solvent and byproduct removal. Thus, an alternative method of isolation for the free amines that is faster than previously reported methods and allows for high yields, solvent removal, and useful byproduct recovery is needed to prevent thermal degradation, particularly for high boiling point product amines.